Wake Up Call

One of our neighbors got a new rooster while I was away. His job is to wake eeeeeverybody up at 5am sharp. He takes his job very seriously. He was prompt as a drill sergeant for my first week back. After 3 days or so, my bitching was equally consistent. Normally a pacifist, but tired of losing sleep, I was seriously considering ways to shut this bird up. Once Karen came home from the states last week I had someone to commiserate with. "As long as we eat it I think it's ok," was her response to my morning rants about what I was going to do to that rooster if I saw it in the street. I was mostly kidding.

A few days ago, the rooster got confused. For three days or so, he started screaming his wake up call just after 3:00 in the morning. Juanca joined in the ranting, telling Karen he intended to find out who owns him. While we wondered, we spent our nights tossing and turning about in our beds, pacing around, getting drinks of water, going pee, all stirring about annoyed from 3something in the morning until whenever the bird would finally stop. The broken sleep surely didn't help us navigate all the craziness that happened this past week with any semblance of grace. Two dead bodies on the beach, broken relationships, withdrawn verbal contracts, canceled classes, job resignations, sadness and uncertainty, confusing new friendships, unexpected roommates, and lots of tears, these are the things that had risen up in our world. All in one week.

Karen was talking out a hard day as we sat in the kitchen eating pasta together Tuesday night after yoga class. The rooster let out one of his best belts ever. Ar Ar Ar ARRR!!!! She stopped talking, her sad face made into a half smile (still sad eyes), I stopped chewing and we both started laughing. "There is seriously something wrong with him!" she said, "It's 11o'clock at night!" "Dinner!" I joked, and thought that at least we were getting it out of the way. Nope. He still woke us up in the middle of the night. And again at 5am. Juanca went out knocking on doors during the 3am wake up. Apparently no one is owning up to the rooster. But everyone is feeling murderous. The whole neighborhood is in on a plot to cook this bird for dinner. Karen says, "We're havin' rooster for Thanksgiving!"

It's 5:50am. I've been awake for a little longer than it took me to write this. The rooster was screaming, so I walked out onto the balcony (my bedroom door that lets into the hallway has a broken lock) to make the rounds for a drink of water and a pee. Even without my contact lenses in I could see the giant full moon lighting up the sky a navy blue twinkling with stars. I drank, peed, and put my contacts in. The moon straight ahead was so full it seemed to be vibrating in the clear sky. To my left, a pink sun was slowly coming up beneath a horizon of tin roofs and tropical trees. The stars were sparse for the full moonlight and rising morning, but were perfect little points of light. Of course the rooster was crowing, but for the first time I was grateful to him. I leaned my forearms on the railing and just looked all around and up, and down. I listened to all the other sounds of wakefulness. A high, radiant, and very round moon. That damn rooster. Some other roosters probably confused by the rogue. A dog howling (just one). A person moaning eerily down in the little valley. Some cats fighting in very high pitched voices. Assorted insects. Glasses and tin cups clanking beneath some of those tin roofs. All sounding as singled out at the sprinkled stars for the heavy before-dawn silence.

I watched the moon go down behind the trees. Everything quieted down to a dull hum.

The sun rose enough to reveal the ocean and the mountains. The birds started waking up. Singing. Twittering. Flying by in determined flocks, or in happy-looking pairs, or yellow-breasted individuality. All except that rooster. He went to sleep or is off doing whatever roosters do when they finally shut up. Cars have started sighing by on the main road off in the distance.

I've seen swells of ocean rise up in response to that bright force of the full moon. Last night Melanie told me a story about being 11 years old in Limon and hearing a crack of thunder, then seeing a wave of street, just before being shaken by an earthquake, 7.8 on the richter scale. This morning, I witnessed a little wave of life. There are forces greater than us, unfathomable in power and strength. It doesn't matter what we need to call them or what images we paint to explain them to ourselves. Unless it's in celebration of them that's just a waste of energy.

If everyone stopped trying to control everything what would happen?

That dead man on the beach with the brown hair and the handsome face, he had the same hollow eyes that Cain had when I found him on that same beach. Death, the absence of life, leaves a body looking so helpless. Like when it comes, the force is so strong, the choice is obvious. Light reabsorbs with a brighter light, like those stars in that moon and sunlit sky. The rest is unnecessary. Leave it on the beach. I wondered, looking down at him, if he struggled in his last moments, or if he simply realized the strength of the force that had hold of him and surrendered. Was he enjoying himself up until it came? I felt sad for the people who were missing him. Who would feel that need to come collect the shell he'd left behind.

Relationships and contracts, classes and jobs, man-made structure, life itself, these things are all subject to change. Being sad when they do makes them boomerang. Adapt, learn, and keep paying attention.

It's all a part of the trip.